Author: Brian Lund
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Enrolling a student loan in autopay by December 31 holds a 1% interest cut through June 2028
Federal student loan borrowers who sign up for automatic payments before the end of 2026 are covered by a 1% interest rate reduction that runs through June 2028. The calendar is the story: the benefit began July 1, 2026, the enrollment cutoff is December 31, 2026, and the reduction is described as lasting until June…
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Average hourly pay bought 0.3% less in August than a year earlier
A dollar of hourly pay in August 2026 bought less than it did twelve months earlier. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that real average hourly earnings for all employees decreased 0.3 percent, seasonally adjusted, between August 2025 and August 2026. Pay rose, but prices rose faster. The same BLS release shows the slide continuing…
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Federal workers face a 0% January raise while law enforcement officers get 3.8%
Federal employees on the General Schedule are headed into January 2027 with no across-the-board raise, while a separate group of law enforcement personnel is slated for 3.8%. The split comes from the Alternative Pay Plan that President Trump issued on August 26, 2026, and it leaves two groups of federal workers on very different paths.…
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Washington, New Jersey, Connecticut, Michigan and Minnesota have posted January 1 minimum wages, topping out at $17.73
Five states have now put a January 1, 2027 minimum wage on the record, and the highest of them is Washington’s $17.73 an hour. New Jersey sits at $16.48, Connecticut at $17.48, Michigan at $15.00 and Minnesota at $11.87. For a full-time worker earning the minimum, the gap between the top and bottom of that…
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Borrowers in more than 40 states get subprime auto-loan balances cancelled by November 2 without filing anything
More than 55,000 borrowers who took out subprime car loans through Credit Acceptance Corporation are set to have what they owe erased, with the lender required to provide the relief by the settlement’s November 2, 2026 effective date. Attorneys general in dozens of states announced the $694 million deal on September 17, and none of…
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Banks collected $2.96 billion in overdraft and bounced-check fees in six months
Banks above $1 billion in assets collected $2.96 billion in combined overdraft and non-sufficient funds fees in the first six months of 2026. The number comes from a Motley Fool Money analysis of bank regulatory filings, relayed in a Stacker feature, and no regulator published it. For households, the more useful finding sits next to…
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A bank that holds your deposit owes you a written notice naming five specific things
When a bank decides a deposited check needs more time than its normal schedule, federal rules do not let the hold happen silently. Regulation CC requires a written notice that names five specific things, and the rule’s own wording is short enough to quote in full. The same section sets the dollar thresholds that let…
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Equifax’s settlement over a three-week 2022 coding error closes to claims December 28
A coding error inside Equifax, lasting about three weeks in the spring of 2022, has produced a class settlement that stops taking claims on December 28, 2026. The case concerns credit scores and credit attributes that reached lenders and other third parties in a different form than they should have. Equifax’s own analysis, not the…
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Triad National Security will pay $2.8 million over religious and disability discrimination tied to a vaccine policy
A laboratory management company in Los Alamos, New Mexico, has agreed to pay $2.8 million to resolve charges that it denied religious and disability accommodations to its COVID-19 vaccine and testing policy. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced the agreement on September 29, 2026. The sum is an amount Triad National Security agreed to pay,…
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Treasury says more than 10 million borrowers sit in default and has opened one portal to get out
Two numbers sit at the center of the Treasury Department’s September 30 announcement about defaulted federal student loans, and neither is ten million. Treasury reports more than 5 million borrowers who have been in default for over six years, plus an additional 5 million who entered default in under a year. Alongside those counts, Treasury…